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Political science increases my opinion of humanity one tiny bit today

4Jun2013

Our partisan bark appears to be worse than our bite.

Partisanship seems to affect factual beliefs about politics. For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan.

We investigate whether such patterns reflect differing beliefs among partisans or instead reflect a desire to praise one party or criticize another. We develop a model of partisan survey response and report two experiments that are based on the model. The experiments show that small payments for correct and “don’t know” responses sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in responses to “partisan” factual questions.

The results suggest that the apparent differences in factual beliefs between members of different parties may be more illusory than real.

A new paper by my former Yale cronies John Bullock, Alan Gerber, Seth Hill, and Greg Huber. See the NBER paper and an ungated copy.

not sure this increases my faith in our country. might just do the opposite. now we know Americans’ can be persuaded to relinquish their partisan position for a few bucks. Or that americans’ have no qualms willfully and knowingly distorting information to advance narrow partisan goals…great

I'm a Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. I use field work and statistics to study poverty, political engagement, the causes and consequences of violence, and policy in developing countries. [Read more]